Creatives Grab Coffee - Recap (Part 1) | Creatives Grab Coffee 26

Episode Date: May 20, 2022

Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, a podcast on the business of video production, hosted by Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazarov from Lapse Productions.Our goal is to make the video production industry smaller by creating a sense of community. Whether you are a creative, an entrepreneur, or a professional there is knowledge for you to learn. Join us as we have industry professionals from around the world come on the show and share their insights on the industry and business. Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee. Welcome to Video Production.Today we're going to do a 10 episode recap (Episode 15-25).To learn more about the show, visit: https://www.lapseproductions.com/creatives-grab-coffee/Subscribe and follow for future episodes!Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vHd8BdbkMQITFZmDJ0bo9Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/creatives-grab-coffee/id1530864140 Instagram: @CreativesGrabCoffee https://www.instagram.com/creativesgrabcoffee/Produced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS – https://www.lapseproductions.comInstagram: @lapseproductions https://www.instagram.com/lapseproductions/

and we're back which episode is this 25 26 i think it's 27 26 or should we or should we check it's like we say it's 25 but in reality we already have a 25 i think it's i think it's a 12th 12th episode we're doing because we oh hold on we started episode 15 oh yeah you said you want okay yeah we had an intro episode of episode 15 and then we started at 16 so we're on 26 because today's the recap episode yeah cgc recap episode 10 episode recap as much as this is for our listeners and viewers, this is more so for ourselves because we learned from season one. We did 14 episodes and we didn't take notes. And now we don't know what those episodes are all about. 14 episodes that we need to rewatch because we have no idea what the hell they're about. I think we got the gist of it. A lot of it kind of went into the back of our minds for those

particular episodes. And then we just started of went into the back of our minds for those particular episodes. And then we just started implementing it throughout the year in 2021. I think one of the biggest was mainly continue to foster relationships, build your online presence, focus on SEO, treat your business like a business. Those were the main things that we talked about. That's the most generic stuff you could ever bring up. Well, that was the gist of a lot of the things. And to be honest, if we, if we start diving through a lot of these episodes, like it sounds like when you, when you

go to the, when you go to one of those, uh, what do you call them? Those entrepreneurs on, on Instagram. And they go like, you know, you wake up at seven o'clock, you know, you wake up at 4am, you go to the gym for an hour, you work six hours and that's it. You do that for a year and you're good. The ironic thing though, is that a lot of those fake entrepreneurs, they're spouting things that they have heard from actually successful people because it actually worked for them, but they actually applied it. These entrepreneurs that regurgitate this stuff, they say it and post those motivational quotes on Facebook, but they don't actually do any of that. They just regurgitate it. But the funny thing that I noticed about the latest 10 episodes that we did as we were coming back into it, a lot of the same

ideas, topics were kind of being revisited, but it was just kind of like with different people's experiences, you know, everyone talked about how SEO was very important, but everyone had different degrees of, no, not everyone. Sorry, but it was, it was a couple of what, what I noticed is that, I mean, we could look at our notes over here seo was mentioned once twice three four four okay four times four episodes but they all had like every couple of guests kind of were regurgitating the same thing in a way uh big focus was on

creating strategic video yeah a of, a lot of guests were talking about that. Yeah. Yeah. Strategic video results, results-based videos. I mean, we're going to go through all of these in this episode anyways, we'll just take it off, but maybe we should just start going into it right from episode 16. Yeah, let's just dive right into it. So episode 16, we had Bridget from B Video Productions. And I don't know about you, but I felt like that episode, I felt a little rusty just jumping right into it again after a full year hiatus. It was actually pretty good. No, no, no. Because I edited it. It was, it was fine. We actually got a lot of usable highlights out of that one. Yeah. A couple of those cracked the 3000 view mark on Instagram, which I still don't

know how that happened, but yeah, I know how. So when we started posting Instagram reels, the first four reels we posted got 3000 plus hits. Yeah. Which surprised us. Cause at the time that's what I were used to getting like 20 views on max like on on one of the episodes even like on some of the ig tv videos you were posting the reason for that is because when you first start posting on instagram reels instagram tries to boost its reach to kind of get you like into the groove of their thing and everything and then based on that if people like the content then obviously into the groove of their thing and everything and then based on that if people like the content then obviously like the algorithm will favor it and everything

i think in terms of our content i don't know why it kind of tapered off to around the 400 mark i mean our content is kind of niche in a way but that's why it it is niche and that is why it probably didn't continue to get that level of engagement. It makes sense that it, that it got a little bit of a push at the beginning based on what you're saying, but there's a very specific type of audience that is looking for, for this type of content and it's trying to learn from it. But if you look at the consistent views after that,

it kind of started to get a little bit more consistent of maybe 300, 400, 500, 600, which is kind of the audience that we were typically trying to reach out to anyway i mean we weren't doing this for the numbers game anyway so yeah it was just a cool thing we noticed that definitely ig tv and uh tiktok uh oh sorry not ig tv reels and tiktok do pretty well for us everything else is kind of 30 ish views but those two platforms pretty pretty interesting yeah why don't we dive into a little bit of some of the topics that we discussed in this episode maybe like the top two or three per episode i think would be a good uh sure sure kind of guide

guideline i mean the meat of this episode was the importance of pivoting so what bridget did with her business was she was doing predominantly live action video and then when the pandemic hit uh she wasn't getting any of that so she pivoted into animation video and she's doing really good on that front you know getting a lot of work and everything so her business is now where it was in the past, 90% live action, 10% animation. Now it's the other way around. So the main lesson from that is sometimes you need to pivot your business to survive. And more generically to say, you have to adapt. Adapt. You have to adapt. Adaptability is so key. And if any of the businesses that failed or

went under during the pandemic, it's because of that they didn't get the chance to adapt. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it was an easy time for everyone, but sometimes some people got hit a lot harder. I feel like at the time, if we were a lot further along and then we got hit by the pandemic, it might have been difficult for us to adapt but because we were so nimble as we mentioned before we managed to kind of low-key survive it you know and just kind of power through it do we know anyone that's gone under because i've like even people that i check online in the toronto scene i they're still up there still doing work maybe the big ones i think i'm more so talking about the smaller smaller type agencies are the ones that don't really treat uh

treat their businesses like a business right i think that was i guess just freelance so what so i guess just freelancer slash i'm kind of a business owner kind of just went back to being freelance or just pulled out entirely? Maybe. I mean, a lot of these other companies, they probably are still going, but they probably still took a hit to the point where it just kind of took them back several steps. Right. So I think that's more so what happened. To be honest, I feel like everyone is already very COVID out. I don't know if that's the right phrase. I don't, I don't think it's a word, but you know what I mean? They're tired of it at this point, we're all kind of moving past it.

So let's kind of also talk about some of the other interesting things. And what was this one? Business plans are just a guideline. I found this pretty funny because it's a good way to get your business started, thinking about what you want to do, how you want to do it, especially when you don't have a lot of experience, but it shouldn't be the be all end all. If you put something in your business plan, that shouldn't be necessarily set in stone. If you need to adapt, if you need to change your business model, you can by all means go for it. The business plan is an ongoing process and it's constantly changing.

So that was a pretty funny one that I thought we did. Barbosa says in parts of the Caribbean, it's not so much a rule as it is a guideline. That's what I always thought of when I read that. That is a good one. I like that. I can hear his voice already. With the parlay bit.

The code is more of a guideline. Which is ironic because it's a code. A code. The other one I really liked from this episode is that video is a high-touch business. And what she meant by that is that there's a lot of touch points in the video process, right? You're constantly like guiding your client through it,

getting their input, having a checklist and everything. It's not really an automated process. There's a lot of involvement in it. Yeah. Like you have to involve your client because you want to make sure that what you're producing for them is exactly what they want. It's very rare where a client will come to you and say, I want video, make it. And then we wait till we final delivery. I feel like that probably only happens in very niche, uh, parts of the industry. Like for example, if you were to, if you were a very popular product, uh product videographer who created a lot of product videos, closeups, things like that, you might have a brief that you work with the client, but the client can probably send you the product.

And then you just work with your own team or by yourself in studio, produce the product, deliver it. And that's it. That's probably one where there wouldn't be as much of a high touch business model, but otherwise in almost every other aspect of video it is so it's a it was a it was a nice kind of turn of phrase that she pointed out which i really liked yeah pretty much exactly what you said and i guess if you're in the creative industry i guess everything is a is high touch not just video but photography graphics animation all high touch exactly uh you said a

good point during that episode too you said you can't delegate a role you don't know which is true you gotta you gotta have a little at least a little bit of experience in varying roles just so when you are hiring or you are delegating tasks you kind of know what to what to ask for and then what you should be receiving well it's more so also that you need to know what you expect from that role it's not necessarily i i think in that one i was a little bit more so touching upon the the point of you need to have experience at least in some way to understand what the role is so you can delegate it. But at the same time, I've learned that you, as long as you also know

what you need from this role, what, what the responsibilities are, what the standards are, you've researched the role and you know that it could be very helpful for your business. If you know that, then you can delegate it as well you can't just say for example i need a graphic designer you hire one but then you don't have a game plan for them essentially whatever role you have in order to delegate you need at least some kind of game plan whether you know it or not that intensely okay so that's a little different than what you were saying in that episode a little bit yeah it was it was was funny because I talked with a few people that had actually even commented on that particular episode.

And it's not what I was saying I'm changing entirely. I do agree with it, but it's more so also adding another element to it where if you understand what is expected of the role, what the standards are, what the roles and responsibilities will be for it, then you can delegate that as well. You don't necessarily have to be able to be 100% perfect in it. But yes, if you do know how to do the role, if you need to step into it as well, that is

another bonus, right? But again, it really depends on the business line of work that you're in. But I think in video, it is definitely a better, it's better for your business if you are able to step into that role, because you never know sometimes projects change. And sometimes you need to put on a few different hats as I'm sure everyone in this. I'm sure that everyone who has been listening has seen that I wear many different hats on every episode. So I've taken a very kind of subtle hint to that with each episode. Was that what you meant when you said you need to wear many hats? You just strictly meant you just need to wear many different physical hats? Or did you mean metaphorically? Interpret it as you will.

hats or did you mean metaphorically? You know, that actually flies into a lot of the other topics that have been coming up with regards to, you know, who you kind of need to bring into your business. We've been asking a lot who your first hires are. And a lot of the answers are pretty much like, look, when you get to a point, where am I going with this? Like, you basically, I guess in terms of delegating, you kind of, if you are an entrepreneur and a business owner like us, you kind of will know what that, like how to delegate properly because you are wearing all the different hats that you will have to delegate in order to grow the business so i guess and on that end the biggest takeaway would be you need to learn how to communicate properly yeah to your delegators or communicate your delegations you mean your delegate because i i think it was Matthew Collins. He was saying from capture the moment media, he was talking about how, yeah, you need to delegate, but you also need to know how to communicate properly because as an entrepreneur, if you've been doing it all yourself, you kind of

have the game plan kind of in your head, but the person you're hiring might not have that game plan or your vision exactly. So you need to learn how to communicate that properly to them as well. Yeah. And especially when you're hiring people, you have to hire people that can take a load of the workload off of, I don't know. A load of the workload. A load of the workload. They take the load off. So you just have the work.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly exactly where they would basically take over a part of the business that is taking up a huge amount of your time and i remember we when we the first time we started to kind of do that was when we were delegating the editing role with a lot of our client projects because when before we first started we were basically going from project to project right you know one small project for about a week, two weeks, three weeks, we're done. Then we move on to the next one. We were very self-sustaining, self-sufficient business at that point, the two of us. Then when we started noticing that it was one project popped up, but then another person

called, then another person called, then another person called. At the same time, we're having three to five projects happening at the same time. You and I can't do all of that you know and we needed to bring other people that we can trust and develop relationships with and and that's how we were able to kind of expand and grow and that kind of saved us also in in 2020 when there was a little bit of an influx of work towards the end of the year and we managed to manage all those projects well uh earlier this year it saved their butts too because uh brought nick our editor on and i don't know how he would have finished that project if it wasn't for him that project wouldn't have happened without without

him at that point because yeah producing 80 videos in sorry 88 videos in one month is not something that is very doable or easy. If you don't have people helping you, especially when you're on set constantly throughout the day, you need someone who is working on those videos, pumping them out as they go. That's the only way to do it. So, yeah. Okay. Last point before there's two more points just quickly on SEO. We touched on, more points just quickly on seo we touched on we everyone already knows at this point yes seo is very helpful and everything um so yes we're just going to quickly pass from that point to um the last point of that episode which was talking about how uh it's hard being a solopreneur if you don't have like a team so i remember um which was talking about how like

for her when she gets a good project or whatever like she doesn't have anyone to high five except for herself no fuck uh but she has like developed a strong network with the other businesses around her office so i guess if you are a solopreneur it's good to develop a type of network of other businesses so you can have that sort of emotional support system in place, not just for when you're running into problems, but also when you're doing well, it's just good to be able to talk to someone about that. with someone at least right and it's not also just surrounding yourself with certain people within your network but it's also sometimes the environment having sometimes even a workspace to go to where a lot of other creative and like-minded people are all working on their own projects their own businesses that's why i've always found interesting these uh shared workspace type uh i wouldn't call them incubators really but it's like a shared workspace a work hub isn't that what they call it hub yeah work hub that's that's the word

uh where basically just a lot of entrepreneurs all get together and and uh and just work on their projects it's just a creative space to it's almost you know what it's like it's almost like university but for adults and entrepreneurs kind of you know it's like the library section of the university that's it the third floor of the Ryerson library everybody's quiet nobody makes no no that was the one that was the open open concept where you could talk wasn't that it oh yeah that was the what was it I forget what it was called but yeah anyways they get the point yeah yeah but one thing just to note about these shared workspaces is google will be a pain to get your business registered if you're going to be working out no no you're going to confuse them if you want to get the verification code so you can change your address on google maps it is a nightmare

to deal with we're trying to come up with i mean they're supposed to mail you the code we've been waiting over a month i don't know what they're what's going on it's been over a month they say they'll send it in two weeks so we get in touch with them and then they're like okay we could do a a video verification in like so they'll, we'll go on Google Meets and whatever. And we're now registered with this work hub place. And then apparently because their signage is not there, it doesn't count. So I'm like, okay,

can you at least send us the verification code? And it's like, yeah, it'll be sent by mail. I'm like, it's been over a month and I've done it twice. And they're like, okay, we can't do anything about it because that's a different department. I'm like, can you connect me with someone with that department they're like it's all automated we can't help you and i'm like this doesn't help me at all what i what i find very funny is that over video call they want to see they want to see a business card they want to see uh they want to

see signage they want to see your third born uh you but what size underwear do you wear but yeah what type of underwear you wear but the verification code you get that it doesn't matter if they're even a business yeah yeah makes no sense anyway no sense it's a little google that's a little google rant i hope they hear this and figure it out for us hopefully this clip goes viral listening are you listening please i hope they hear this and figure it out for us hopefully this clip goes viral listening are you listening please i mean they're listening for sure i don't i don't think they're actually they're listening but not actively listening yeah oh my god okay next was episode 17 we had judah hernandez from black and white media and uh And Judah had a lot of metaphors in that episode.

He had a lot of good, he had a lot of good sayings. But I really liked a lot of the topics that he also really dove into, which was about the need to educate your clients on the video process. And after that episode, I noticed a little bit more when I was talking to clients about the process or anything video related. Some of them who haven't done video before, they want to know. They want to understand it a little bit more. And you have to be open to just even explaining the most basic of things. To you, they might be basic, but to them, it helps them understand how video fits within their business. Because if they think to themselves, a lot of people come to us and say, Hey, uh, is it possible to get a video done

in three days? That's because they don't know how it works, how much time and, uh, energy goes into it. And that is what part of the reason why all of last year and this year, we've been creating a lot of our own educational blog video content that kind of dives into different aspects of the whole video production industry and the whole process. And I think it's really helped a lot of our leads and clients understand how we work and how the world works. Yeah. I mean, we definitely use it as reference points, you know, especially at the beginning we'll say if this is your first time check out this video or we're going through this process right now here's a

little video that explains it oh okay you need to prepare for an on-camera interview here's another blog content that'll just explain the whole process to you and what you need to prep for definitely helpful yeah anyways as i was saying you need to prep for. Definitely helpful. Yeah. Anyways, as I was saying, you need to discover your clients' challenges. When you're talking to them, if you don't know what pain points they have, what challenges they're facing, what problems they're trying to solve, if you don't understand that, there's not much you can do in terms of recommendation. Sometimes clients might come to you already knowing what those are, which is great because then you can work, you already, you will know immediately what type of videos will work for them.

But sometimes they might come to you and say, this is, we're thinking about doing a video. Very open-ended though. Where do you, where do you start? And always the best way to start is figuring out what challenge are you trying to tackle? What problem are you trying to solve? figuring out what challenge are you trying to tackle? What problem are you trying to solve? Yeah. And sometimes they'll come up to you and say, we need, I don't know, this type of video. Um, and we just need a number for it. So this also is applicable because you need to, again,

it's like going to a doctor, right? You don't go to a doctor and say, I need this medication for my back. You go to him and you say, I got a back problem. What do I do? And then he diagnoses you and says, okay, you know what? Actually, you just twisted something out of go. I don't know here. You need surgery. You don't need medication, right? So it's the same thing when it comes to video, right?

When a client comes to you, you need to diagnose and see what the real problem is not the problem they're presenting you with so you have to keep asking questions you need to again discover your client's challenges and then you need to kind of prescribe the solution to that problem again find the problem and deliver the solution that might not be what they want to hear either. Like sometimes if they say, no, we want this kind of video. And then you say, actually, I think you need this. If they disagree with you, you have two options. You can either go ahead and still do what they want, or you can say, look, if you don't

trust my expertise, then maybe it's maybe you should go to someone else. Go to another doctor, video doctor. Dr. Kirill, Dr. Dario, you know, it's got some ring to it, you know, maybe you want to go to the doctor from the Simpsons, you know, maybe that guy will help you out. Yeah. I mean, look, some clients are simply looking for yes people and that's it. They just want people to boss around. And if they're not willing to listen to you and that's it they just want people to boss around and if they're not willing to listen to you that's a very good indicator of the type of relationship you might have with them and you have to decide for yourself are these the types of work relationships you want to have with your clients or do you want to form a partnership a collaboration something where

you both work together and grow from so these are questions you have to also ask yourself. It has to reflect your philosophy, right? So if you're pitching results-based videos, right? You also want to have results-based relationships, right? You don't want a relationship with a client that ends up with zero result, right? If you create a video just because you were a yes man and it wasn't the right video for them, and the result is zip, nothing, then you're getting nothing out of that relationship either. Sure, you'll get a paycheck, but is it a continuous paycheck? Probably not. You bring up a very valid point because one of the things I even tell a lot of leads now is that we're not looking for just a one project client. That's not what we're looking for.

We don't want to just take this lead in, do a quick video for them, send them on their way. And that's it. That's not what we're about. We want to grow with our clients. We want to see them succeed. I tell them this even in our first introductory call, because I let them know right away what my intention is of working with them, how I see our business relationship moving forward. And a lot of the time I get great responses from them. And a lot of them are intrigued because probably a lot of people don't tell them that right off the bat. Yeah. I can imagine a lot of production companies, they get a call and someone says,

I need a video. Okay. So when do you want to do the video? It's like, that's not the first question you ask. When is the do they, when do you want to do it? What's your budget? They might not even ask the budget until deep into the sales process, but yeah, like, I mean, for sure. And again, this goes back to client education. A lot of clients are not familiar with our world. So this is why you have to really educate them, not just on the video process, but your process as well. Exactly. And if you don't know your process, you got to sit down and figure that out.

Exactly. And that was actually another thing that helped us even, that was actually another topic that we discussed throughout the episodes as well, that you need to know how you're going to do the whole process from start to finish and get as detailed as possible. We all know the classic pre-production production and post-production. That's just a small, that's just a small part of it. That's not even including all the, and then even those are broken down into,

here's the thing. I think if you're a freelancer or you're just starting your video production business, you're just focusing on that. And even those processes are very basic. You know, they're not as detailed as you think they are. You need to figure things out right from the introductory call or right when they fill out the form on your website. What's the next step after that? You got to figure it out all the way to contract signing and then pre-production then within pre-production you got to have everything in place yeah storyboarding shot lists you know the class treatment yeah but that goes that goes to systems which we talked about

a couple of episodes further down i i feel like what what i'm seeing with this recap episode is we're kind of going from topic to topic which I I kind of like it I like the the more organic way of how we're going from but we do have to also highlight some of the key episodes that we we talked about and and those ones we'll just go episode episode and this might even be a two-parter I I was actually gonna say I think this is gonna be like a two maybe even a three-parter depending on how long this because we're only on episode 17 we're on episode two technically we're already a half hour in is it actually okay wow yeah so who knows but okay let's go to the next part which was uh working on your proposal yeah so that was one thing judah was talking about how when he really puts a lot more

effort into his proposals that's when he started to close a lot more projects which i agree but we personally have taken taken a different approach to this so we don't really refer to our proposals as proposals anymore we kind of just refer to them as summaries summary meeting and uh we actually you know chris point chris from signature video group pointed this out which is the episode after this how your proposal should just be a summary or a recap of everything you've discussed up until that point basically your proposal proposal, there's no surprises there. You're just doing a recap. This is what we, this is what you came to me for. This is kind of the information I got from you.

This is the solution I suggested. This was the budget we discussed. This is the budget we discussed. These are some more details. Okay. So do you want to move? Are we moving forward with this ball is in your court that that is how you have to look at it and uh it's like the the word proposal i've i've noticed that it's really it's like the rfp it puts you in a position where the client is there to judge you and what and what you're going to provide them is not good enough and that you have to dazzle them.

That's not, that's not what the point is from that project. The dazzling comes later when we actually produce the content for you, because you already know, especially what's going to be coming from that. The, the proposal, the proposal stage. Yes. Like you said, is the summer is more so the summary document stage i i didn't realize that we actually discussed that on the chris episode so that was like a nice kind of yeah chris was talking about how it was just like a it should just be a recap you shouldn't

be bringing up anything new which makes sense because if you're doing things the right way if you are discovering your clients challenges, and then you're talking about the solutions and everything, the proposal, like you're not supposed to be doing that at the end. You've, you've done all that stuff. Like again, RFP or a proposal is so it's such a broken system because you're trying to sell them on you. So you are facing an uphill battle at that point.

Right. But by the time you get to that stage if you do things the right way they're already sold on you like if they say no at that point a they wasted a lot of your time b you wasted a lot of their time c you didn't vet properly. Or D, you screwed up big time. You screwed up something earlier and now you're paying the price for it, right? Yeah, the summary document, essentially, there shouldn't be any issues when you get to that point.

Maybe just some clarifications or adjustments based on what was discussed. But think of it like this. If you were to, say you came up with an idea when you're talking to a client, they're giving you their problems, their challenges, you're trying to figure out a solution for them. And then you came up with an idea when you're talking to a client they're giving you their problems their challenges they're trying to you're trying to figure out a solution for them and then you come up with a cool idea you tell them right in that initial call it's like this is what we're thinking that we can do for your project it will solve this this and this because

of this reason and this reason what do you think and then they'll be like oh since you put it that way that's good but imagine if you put it on document, the way you write it is going to be interpreted very differently to how you would probably communicate it verbally or in person. It's like the classic broken telephone idea that we've discussed before. Over a slide deck or anything like that, people are going to interpret it differently. Sometimes they need to hear from the person, the expert, what they're going to create for them. What is a document going to necessarily tell them aside from a little bit of a summary, right?

So that that's another thing he discussed as well, how he, he presents his proposals directly to the decision makers. Right. And so some other companies mentioned that as well. I think Chris mentioned it and Braden and Cameron from your story agency mentioned that Cameron, Cameron was really big on that. How, if he, he's presenting the proposal or whatever, he makes sure he gets the decision maker on the line, because again, there's no point playing that broken

telephone game where they you you pitched yourself to someone who now has to pitch you to their higher up that doesn't make sense right that that system is completely broken and you're most likely not going to get the project doing it like that yeah because sometimes you don't even know what potential bias that that decision maker might have from that employee, because sometimes higher ups might have certain opinions of what the capabilities are. No, I don't, I don't even think it's that Carol. I think it's just the fact that I think it's just, no, no. Cause then you're talking about a toxic environment. I think it's just the fact that no one can sell you better than yourself and they're not going to be able to like, there's, there's certain things that you're just not going to put in that document.

There might just be bullet points or whatever that you need to elaborate on. Again, if they're not the decision maker, you got to get them on. That's what we've started to do as well. It's worked out, working out pretty good. No complaints. Actually, if they say no, they don't want to. That's a red flag right there. So that goes back to vetting your client properly and getting them to go through your process, not just you going through their hoops. They also got to, you know,

like you have a system, you need to have a system in place. And if you're doing everything right, that system works for you. If someone doesn't want to follow the system, go somewhere else. Cause otherwise I'm just going to waste my time. If you spend all this time developing a process that works for you, why would you break that? Well, the other thing you also have to remember, or that people need to remember is that this process is not just for us, but it's also for the client. It is designed exactly in a way that helps deliver a good experience for them and help manage a lot of the questions and things that they have. Imagine, I remember early days, we would work on a client for a project.

They would ask for a certain deliverable. We say, sure, something like this. Okay, great. Perfect. We do the deliverable. We give it to them. But then that's when a lot of revisions start coming because then the client is going to be like, oh, maybe we also need this.

Oh, maybe we also need this. No, we also need this. But if you didn't go through the process in the beginning of trying to figure out what they need in the video a little bit more in depth that they can sign off on then then that's it then that means your system you didn't have a system that worked so that's actually sometimes a good indicator if there's too many revisions happening in the in the in the post-production process, that means you clearly didn't do enough in the pre-production and working with your client to develop that part of the process further. Yeah. Just a small note regarding revisions. Cause we did talk, uh, we had a really good episode, uh, on revisions.isions. It'll be coming up after this sometime.

You should also figure out a way not to let it get out of hand too much because sometimes the revision process, even if you did do everything the right way, it could still pop up where it turns into like this mutation or this like cancerous tumor that's just going out of control. So I guess just for other production companies out there, it is a good idea to educate your client on

the revision process. So if you, after like a certain amount of revisions, you can't let them know after they've signed the contract and after, and when you guys are in post-production that hey after the third one you guys got to start paying because that's going to cause problems too so yeah one thing we've done for example is we've put that in our um in our expectations of what they need to know yeah yeah setting that to them yeah yeah we put that in our in our earlier documents i think even before onboarding uh oh in our that in our earlier documents. I think even before onboarding. Oh, yeah, in our summary document, we put that, we strictly outline, look, this is the, or I think it was in our onboarding documents, you know, like this is part of our system. Like if we include these amount of revisions, it's outlined in this part of our contract.

Again, you got to have transparency with your client because you don't want, it'll cause problems later on that don't need to be, that don't need to happen. So this kind of loops into checklists as well. You need to have a checklist for your clients and you need to let them in on those checklists so that as they're going through the process with you, they're checking off on everything, right? So you break it down into however many stages you're onboarding, your pre-production, your production, your post-production. As long as they're involved with the process,

then later on when something does arise, you kind of like, you did your due diligence and they know everything. So they can't, it can't turn into a sour or bitter relationship. Just a way of mitigating that. Exactly. At the end of the day, you have to mitigate that. You have to make sure that they have a good experience. And sometimes if you realize that you made a mistake somewhere in the process,

you have to do what you can to make sure though, that the client is happy, learn from that experience and apply it to the next project or with the next client. But with that, if you bring up too many issues within while that project is trying to be completed, that's when a sour relationship could come from it. If depending on who you're communicating with, right. It might sometimes be a little bit easier if it's a long term client that you've, um, that knows you very well well then maybe you can kind of uh talk to them a little bit more frankly uh but if it's sometimes a new client you don't necessarily know each other that well as of yet and that's why you have to really make sure you understand more in the pre you have to communicate these things more so in the pre-production so that you can avoid those problems yeah again set setting expectations that is key uh that is the key uh ingredient in this

you gotta let for both sides you know what is their expectation of you and what is your expectation of them exactly it's a collaborative effort it's not you're not working for someone and they're not working for you you guys are working together to achieve a certain goal or solve a certain problem. And this kind of also goes back. It goes to one of the last points from our episode with Judo is, is, is nice phrase, a turn of phrase. The biggest challenge will always be yourself. So get out of your own way sometimes. Right.

challenge will always be yourself. So get out of your own way sometimes, right? Yeah. Yeah. Um, in terms of other things we discussed in that episode, just quickly, um, uh, you need people around you that you can trust. Obviously this goes to having a strong team and just being able to delegate the work to people that again, you trust. In terms of, I think the hardest part about that is hiring the right people. So secret to that, I don't know. You just have to trial and error it and get lucky, I guess. But that, that is a one that I think a lot of people have trouble with is just hiring the right people. So, but once you do hire the right people then you should be able to trust them and that'll make your team really well and then i would say last point before we move on to the next episode is um video is the gateway to real problems so by that he meant like when you figure out what the true pain points are then you can apply the right solution to it. I guess this loops back to problem solution.

Yeah. I think what he meant by that is like, if you really want to figure out what potential problems or challenges you're facing in your business, try to make a video. The right company will ask you the right questions that you probably haven't even thought of. And then you can start thinking to yourself, oh, I don't know what my key message will be for this project. Okay. Maybe I have to first figure out what I want to communicate for it before I even dive into it. Okay. Thank you for letting me know. And that's, that, that also goes to, to back to what we were saying, where we're trying to also help educate the clients. We ask these questions because they will help ultimately help you in more than one way or another.

I remember one time we did a, we did a discovery call with this one potential lead where it was, I think it was like five of us in that call. And we were asking these questions and then one of them got very defensive from us asking these questions. Yeah. He said, why are you asking so many questions? What do I i why do i have to answer these questions for you and we said we're trying to just understand your business and your business yeah they didn't they didn't know how their business worked and the funny thing is that that that call ended that relationship which i thought was hilarious because we got a call from our contact there after that and they're like oh i was really upset about the

thing and the this and the that and i was like what happened like we were just asking like a simple straightforward questions like but again i guess they wanted what was your goal what does your business work why what type of video do you what what kind of videos can we possibly make based on your on how you guys operate your business if you don't if you don't want to communicate that to us then i would then we can't help you so that's fine honestly i i'm happy that that uh that that that that project didn't go through and that just affirmed a lot of the things that we talked about yeah and i guess that it was just a red flag for us when they reacted that we were like, all right, we didn't mean anything, but I don't even know what you took from it, but

okay. Bye. Some people are, some people are also naturally defensive. I, I noticed one thing that I find that is a defensive trait. If you're talking with someone on zoom is if they have a blank screen uh on purpose and don't want to show their face to you that's a very to me that's personally like a little bit of a red flag sometimes because yeah like why are we doing this over i think i think going forward yeah i think going forward it's like no like i i need to see who i'm doing business with okay we can reschedule this then and then i would just take that as a red flag. Like I think a lot of video production companies, well, I don't know how it is with the bigger ones,

but at least for people like us, you really need to vet your potential leads because it's time consuming creating a video and there's a lot of work, a lot of resources that need to go into it. It's a big time investment and it could be like a potentially bad money investment for you as well because you got to hire people and everything

you need to vet your clients man like if you're getting a bad vibe or they don't want to go ahead with the system you have in place buy go away i don't need you i got other people i got i get email we get emails every day new people i don't care bye i got another lead yeah because if someone else will come along that'll be better than you if you're working on that project and dealing with that headache that's taking away time that you could be helping someone else who actually needs the needs it and is willing to listen to work with you yeah exactly why would you put yourself through that uh Beginners do because one, they don't know better. Two, they need money. Honestly, everyone experiences this in the beginning. I, I like there, I remember one of the very first projects we ever did was like this real estate

company. I think it was based in Kingston or something like that. And we did most of the project. Uh, we finished the video edits, delivered them radio silence for like two weeks from them. And then at the end, they said, Oh, we don't really want these videos. So we're not, no, no. They asked us, they asked us to do some edits. Now, mind you, this was, Oh, actually no Carol. I remember that project. They asked us to edit some of the videos they had edited that's something like that yeah exactly it's and then radio silence yeah radio silence and they don't want to pay no no you're dealing with me you pay yeah we've always been

paid for every project we've never not been paid for a project take note from henry hill and uh goodfellas or no pa Pauly from Goodfellas. Pauly. There's no, no, we always get paid for our work. Never, never not been paid for a project. Yeah. I don't know what that's like, to be honest with you. Never experienced it. People, they don't have processes set in place. Processes are there not only to protect you, but also even protect the client. Even when we didn't, even when we didn't have processes, we still got paid for all of our stuff. But on the topic of payment, one new thing we've been doing is we,

we before we start production and now we're like a hundred percent adamant about this, we get paid 50% or we have a split of, if there's a big, if there's a big time difference between when you guys signed the contract and the first production date, we do 15% deposit. And then 35, the 35 is due before production. And then the other option we have is 50% before production. And then the other 50 is due on the first draft. We don't mess around with this stuff. Like, especially now that we're getting bigger and bigger projects, we have to hire crew. That's a big chunk of, yeah, we, they got to get paid.

I've never not paid a freelancer. In fact, we pay them the day of the day. The day the project is done, we pay them. The latest usually is something like, depending on obviously how big the project is done, we pay them. The latest usually is something like, depending on obviously how big the project is also, but most of the time we pay within a week usually because we've been on their end. We like the feeling of being paid right away

after you've done the work. Yeah. Not chasing people for months. It's not fun. So we want to take care of the people that we work with because we understand what that's like. And these deposits that we're asking for from our clients, it's not just for us, it's also for you as a business. Imagine you

have put $100,000 into the marketing for a certain campaign and you hire a video production company which is set to start shooting and producing a video a month before you need that video ready. You hire them, but you don't pay a deposit. And then two weeks later, when you're supposed to have set shoot date, who knows what that company might, might be up to because there's no deposit or anything set in stone. No, no, but that that's, that's, I think what you're saying is you need to set that in that situation.

Yeah. You should have signed the contract deposits are mainly no no look accountability look it's meant for accountability deposits are just so um they're in you know it's more so commitment you're committed down to this project for both it's for both parties that's what i'm trying to say it's a commitment from one to the other and vice no no because for us if you give us the deposit whether you gave us a deposit or not i mean we have it in our contract but let's say back in the day we just had the contract first and then we did a lump sum yeah we're still in we're still in like as soon as you sign the contract we're legally bound so it doesn't matter uh it's more so yeah you want that commitment from the client to go like i don't you can't back out like you're committed to going through with this right because again

it um we're gonna have to put a lot of work into this so this deposit covers the the um the uh pre-production work the communications the cast and crew scheduling it covers a lot of stuff and then also like imagine yeah imagine they cancel like the day before on you well we've had stuff like that in the past right and at the time it was just me and you shooting so it was all good but imagine you hire someone and then you tell them you tell them like the the day the day of or the night before hey it's canceled man that guy probably took took yours instead of someone else's project so now they're short whatever their day rate is and that's not fair to them a relationship that ruins with them too yeah it's not good it's not right yeah essentially it's

there just for accountability for everyone too so um anyways i think that pretty much covers everything at this point from uh judah's episode let's go with at least one more for now and and and then well how far are we into this right now we're 45 minutes into this episode really okay okay this might be like a three-parter i like this yeah well i like it because essentially this this is what we're basically doing is going through some of the episodes and and kind of not rediscovering. Sorry, but going more into detail and on the top, like the key points from that episode. Exactly. I think we're finding the format now for these recap episodes and they might even just be laps discusses topic or i don't know like it could have a completely different type of uh never try naming something again well no maybe not on the fly i can't do it on the fly

like this i can do a lot of other things on the fly but all the other thing you could do on the fly is just the intros oh come on what is this guy What is this guy saying right here? Come on. Anyways, anyways, for episode 18, we had Chris from Signature Video Group. And one really cool point that he really stressed was that an entrepreneur has to build a new skill every year, at least something, however big or small. You need to constantly be growing, not only your business, but you and your skill sets. You need to grow with your business. If your business is growing and you aren't, then something's wrong. I think that's, I don't know what to elaborate on that. Like we we've been experiencing it. I mean, granted we're still new.

So every year is like a big learning experience on many different ends. But yeah, I guess if you're an entrepreneur, the learning never ends, you know, school is never out. Nope. Yeah. You graduated from school, but yeah, the school of life is something a little bit different, right? Getting too philosophical here. Yeah. Other points from that episode, we kind of already discussed, we discussed the broken telephone game, video as an investment, increasing output by increasing your team. Yeah, that the video as an investment is actually something we didn't really, we kind of hinted at, but we didn't really talk about it too much. Uh, but that's one thing that probably at least, uh, clients that know what they're needing and they know what challenges they're trying to solve. They will automatically realize that the video is an investment.

No, no, no, no. That's not what it was. I remember this one. No, I know, but I'm, I'm taking, I'm taking a point from it as well. The client doesn't realize that the video is an investment. It's our job to, to make them view it as an investment. That's what that point was. Yes. If they don't at that point, but they normally never do. Yeah. Because a lot of them also don't know what challenges they're trying to solve. If, if a client is coming to you, it was like, maybe we need a video. Why do

you need a video? Because other people are doing it. That is a good example of a client that doesn't really realize how much of an investment it is. They know it's something that a lot of people are doing and will probably help their business, but they don't really know how it's tied to them. And the key is in order to teach them that video is an investment, you have to tie it to their particular situation, whatever their challenges or problems they're solving. Uh, if the video can solve that particular challenge or problem, then, then they will be able to make connect the dots. It's about kind of connecting the dots and, and, um, and they will be able to make, connect the dots. It's about kind of

connecting the dots and, and, um, and applying to their unique situations kind of. No, I think, I think you're, no, you're, you're making it more complex than it is. Yeah. You're making it way more complex than it was. Like the, the main gist of that was basically, we were discussing how video production companies view videos as investments for their clients, right? But the client mostly sees it as a service or an asset, right? Whereas you need to reframe your client's thinking to view the video as an investment. Because once you do that, then what happens is they're not looking at it as, okay, I need this one minute video with two 15 second ads for the marketing campaign, just because we need the video component part of it.

And yeah, we'll put video ads and this and that. They need to view it as like, okay, I'm putting money to get this asset because it's going to give me a certain ROI. So even when you're going through the discovery call and you're asking them questions related to this, it's supposed to get them to reframe their thinking. Because now, again, you're talking to them and saying, look, this video is going to be 10K, but what are you going to get out of this? And they need to be able to tell you, I'm going to get 100,000 out of this. Okay, great. That's a 10 times, you're getting 10 times what you're putting into this. That makes sense. into this and you get 20 times, you'd have to be an idiot to say no to that. Right. Whereas if you're viewing it just as an asset or a service, then wow, going from 10,000 to 20,000, whoo, that's a big step. Right. But if you say it, uh, if you say it another way, we say like, look,

instead of, uh, you're going to put 10,000, you're going to put, you're going to get a hundred thousand out of this, but let's do this. You need to, you need to hit 200 for an extra 10. You'll be able to do this. Why wouldn't you do that? Again, I'm using examples here just so you guys get the point, but that's roughly the gist of it. And you can be direct in saying this as well to them. That's what we started to do when we have our introductory calls or discovery calls. We refer to video as an investment. You say, what's the budget you set aside for this investment? And they're always taken aback by that. But it's true. If you're just getting the, if you're paying for video and not thinking about it like an investment, what are you doing? You're just wasting money. Yeah, they're literally, that's exactly it. They're wasting money. They're wasting their time, ultimately, not only our time, but theirs especially too. So why would you be throwing money into something when you don't know how it's going to help you? Right. And this is kind of why I was,

this is kind of what I was elaborating a little bit more in my previous point, where you have to tie the investment to how it will help them kind of grow from, from it. Right. You have to basically turn it into an investment in their eyes. You can't just tell them it's an investment, right? That's why I'm saying you have to, you have to relate it to their unique situation. And sometimes, and the first way to do that is ask those probing questions, ask why they're making the video, what is the purpose, how they're going to promote it, what problems or challenges they're going to be solving with it. And that inadvertently puts it in their minds that video is an investment because of all those things it is solving, right? It's about tying it in and kind of reframing,

as you said, but inadvertently. You can't just tell someone this is an investment. Great. No, you can't. No, no, no. You can tell them. Actually, I disagree. I'm saying that's not the only thing you have to do you can't just say it you have to do more you have to also you have to do more but you have to start with again you start yeah i get your point and it makes sense but you have to start with reframing their mindset yes exactly it's like when you go to the military they don't just get you to go and do a couple workouts and this or that they shave your head they like throw away your clothes they give you a uniform they make they they build they break you down to build you back up it's the same thing you need to break them down to build them back up right because the the mindset that they have going into this 99 of the time is completely wrong they're not

welcome to the laps productionsctions army boot camp for clients this is how we will start bringing you your investment Gomer Pile what is this Gomer Pile sir a jelly donut sir a jelly donut what the hell is that

I was watching that in the background earlier i mean it's a good that's not a background scene though when you're not seen plays everything else stops and you watch it i i really wish i had that that sergeant in my life just i'd be so successful by now i'd be like a billionaire people hated him but he's like the like that's the the best person to have in your life but that guy would wake you up at four you'd be like you'd be you'd be the best entrepreneur in the world you'd be like your work ethic would be amazing yeah anytime you slack off he just yells at you and makes you do like a hundred laps you you don't want you don't want to be doing a hundred laps then make sure you finish that proposal today maybe that's a good motivator right yeah yeah what are we at right now one minute

uh we're at an hour we're at an hour yeah maybe i at an hour? Yeah. Maybe we could just do a little bit. I think this might actually, though, be a good point to kind of end part one. Yeah, I think we only went through three, bro. We only went through three, but I think this actually might end up being a two-parter because as I'm scrolling through, a lot of the other topics that are in those episodes, we kind of touched upon a little bit here. Oh, yeah, we did. But but again we will go through them we will discuss them a little bit more in detail and kind of elaborate because um there's a lot to unpack in these episodes you can't really you can't really summarize it all in just one hour all the ideas that we talked about that's

why we had 10 episodes that were an hour to an hour and a half each it's a lot of things they were an hour to hour 15 but yeah it was a lot of stuff i mean we did post a lot of the the highlights on on reels and tiktoks if you're keeping your eyes peeled and following us on social media like you should be doing then you would have uh gotten all the good chunks out of those but if you didn didn't, then shame on you. And why are you watching this or listening to this? How did you end up at the end of this video? Did you actually stay all the way? You know why? Because this is like the Cliff Notes episode.

So they're like, okay, this one I'll watch. This is the Wikipedia and the Spark Notes, you know, from the old days. Maybe we should do one more just to. Well, yeah, you're right. the other ones are very uh similar yeah i i think this is a good point to cut it off at and then we even need to do another one like we pretty much touched on like yeah but i want to i also just want to give the shout outs also to everyone in another episode true true the next one will be more of a rapid fire because we kind of highlighted a lot of the key we went through the meat of this uh recap stuff yeah i wonder what the next recap will be after the next 10 episodes right so i'm curious yeah i want some new stuff

like um i don't want to hear the same stuff over and over again and i think on that front we have been kind of guiding the conversation towards topics that we're more interested in because otherwise we'll just hear a repeat and after repeat after repeat yeah i mean i don't know like we'll we'll we already have like eight other episodes in the can and there's yeah there's another one scheduled um i haven't done any more outreach because i've been pushing it off for some weird reason but i should probably i've been doing i've been slowly get trying to get some more people like i'm really excited about some of the latest episodes that we had recorded because we started bringing in different types of people into the into the conversation i think that's the first step uh up until up until i

guess episode 28 maybe even episode 30 or so we had a lot of pretty much very similar people where we're all small production companies where we're kind of sharing our experiences, which is great. But a lot of us experience the exact same challenges, the exact same problems like in different ways. But this is why we want to start bringing in different creatives from different parts of the industry where they can share a completely different mindset because we did one recently where some ideas were shared that

completely reframed how we were thinking because the way they were conducting their work worked for them, but we figured out ways that it could actually elevate our side of the business by doing it in our own way. Not necessarily exactly what they're doing but getting ideas from it of how we can also improve and that's kind of what we're trying to do also with this series is you know show different people's uh backgrounds their different types of uh worlds and you might learn something as well right i hope i hope

well that i think we can kind of leave it at that thanks for the the select few that stayed all the way to the end of this video don't worry though we will be dropping a couple different uh snippets from this for months to come hopefully so we'll see how it goes nah it's usually it usually lasts about a week i don't know maybe we had a couple decent uh soundbites in this one but yeah in terms of going forward there's going to be a lot less paying pandemic questions i think we've exhausted that one i'm tired of format format is just introduction they they just quickly introduced their background how they got into it yada yada yada and then we just pick out something to go into that's that's essentially the new

new format for the show and then you guys know how we do it we always end it off with either uh what books are you reading because that's always good now see what kind of uh stuff they're reading maybe we can read that as well and like our favorite question how did you get the name that's pretty much it i would love to ask the questions of what is uh an awesome movie that you have seen recently but unfortunately a lot of the movies that are coming out these days are not as if you're asking for recent movies like they're always just gonna say some dumb Marvel movie or something else. Spider-Man.

There's only like Marvel movies that come out nowadays. Disney is single-handedly keeping the movie theaters alive. Yeah, literally. No indie movie is making it into the theaters these days. It's all either on Netflix. To be honest,flix is also kind of dying which is kind of netflix is like the b-movie graveyard you have a b-movie like it's all b-movies like that's all it is and then amazon prime is like they have some classic movies and then like

the good stuff is all like behind a paywall it's like oh you want to watch this the stars channel like the stars channel they trick you until you click you don't realize it until you click on it you're like wait a minute i gotta pay for this what the hell yeah but anyways i think uh that's a good point to leave it off thanks everybody for again uh supporting the show you know however many of you are out there hopefully we can uh grow that audience a little bit more and get a bigger outreach down the road so yes please like comment follow share i don't know just get it out there subscribe subscribe follow what else is left in the what what else do youtubers say

these days i don't know click on my affiliated links which we don't have just click on our website because it'll help us with seo actually you know what might not be bad to do an affiliated links for all of our for our entire um zoom setup for recording that actually might not be a bad idea you want to have this production level quality of a of a zoom call then yeah. Why would they pay for the video production company? They got all this stuff. What a Zoom call I mean.

Huh? For a Zoom call I'm talking about. What for a Zoom call? I mean whoever's listening to this either has their own company or they're in the field anyways. They in the field. Anyways, they got the equipment. You know, it's actually kind of one last thing to note.

I always find it funny anytime we hopped on a call with one of these companies and they noticed that we were with full HD setups for our cameras. And they're like, oh, no, what do I do? That happened a couple of times, which is pretty funny. Anyways, I think that's good. Let's end it off there. Sounds good. All right. Take care, everybody.